


Paint, Sweat, and Tears

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything hurts. Your head hurts, your eyes hurt, your body hurts. You don’t think you’ve ever been in this much pain before.<br/>Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you are drowning in your illusions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint, Sweat, and Tears

The glow of your recuperacoon illuminates your whole respiteblock, casting a green shadow on everything the light touches. The hum of your husktop has ceased since it ran out of battery last night, and it sits cold in front of you. The only sound in your room is the hush of the air vents and your changing breath as you stir.

You wake slowly, groggy from eating too much sopor yesterday. Yesterday was a bad day. A terrible day. One of the computers exploded (again), Karkat and Sollux got into another fight that you had to mediate, and the food replicator made everything taste bland. You couldn’t choke down the dry tasting food, so you spent the entire day downing Faygo and sopor while lying on the floor, trolling the humans. Eventually you passed out, still on the hard ground.

You drag yourself off the floor and out of the sticky mess of sopor and Faygo you made last night. Undressing yourself, you walk into the bathroom and step into the sprinkling apparatus. You wash off yesterday’s paint, soda, and slime and let the water run down your body, relaxing your muscles. Rolling your neck into the water, you think about what lies ahead for you today. Perhaps Equius will fix the replicator, unless he’s busy fixing Tavros’s legs since they still can’t manage stairs. As much as you love your best friend, though, you can’t live on Faygo and hope Equius fixes the replicator first.

Stepping out of the sprinkling apparatus, you dry your hair off and push it out of your face then wrap a towel around your waist and approach the bathroom mirror. Wiping the steam off it, you stare at yourself making sure you had washed all the paint off your face. You missed a spot under your jaw line and you scrub away at it until you’re satisfied.

You open up the bottle of paint that you had been using for quite some time and a foul oder of rotten eggs hits your sniffnodes and you gag in protest. You quickly cap the old paint jar and toss it into your litter cylinder, then proceed to get another one from underneath the sink.

You dip your fingers into the bottle of fresh paint and begin to smear it around your face with expert skill. When you started doing this when you were just a wiggler you had to use a paint brush or a small sponge at first, but by the time you were four sweeps old, you had mastered it and could do it with just your fingers.

You drag one long finger across your forehead and make the circles on your temples and move on to your eyes when you begin to feel a dull pain in the back of your think pan. You ignore it and associate it to last night and continue your work until it begins to worsen. This is too much pain for just last night. You didn’t over do it that much, did you?

You squeeze your eyes shut and pinch the bridge of your nose, hoping that will alleviate the pain. It does not, and in fact it makes the pain worse. You open your eyes to see stars and parts of your vision begin blacking out. You fight for consciousness as you begin to feel lightheaded, head still throbbing in pain. Your vision turns black and you fight to stay standing, grabbing at the counter and panting heavily but you collapse on to the floor with objects of your counter clattering around you. 

Bright lights flash in your vision and you return to darkness. The only thing you hear are your short and quick gasps along with small moans of pain from the ever increasing throbbing in your skull. 

The lights return, bringing blurry shapes that you can not make out. You try to focus on what they are, but reject what you see once they have reached clarity. You see your friend’s bodies, limp and lifeless on the floor. A rainbow made of blood flowing from one troll to the next. Gashes cover them, limbs are broken and sawn off, skulls are beaten in, and you watch as all the blood comes together in a disgusting pool at your feet. You bring your hands up from your sides to find yourself holding your juggling clubs which are covered in the blood that the floor is so violently painted with. Everything goes black again.

 

***

 

You clench and un-clench your fists and you angrily make your way down the corridor, headed straight towards Sollux’s room. He is and always has been the last one to get up, and as your group’s fearless leader it is your duty to make sure everyone is up and on task, trolling the everloving piss out of the humans. But seriously, this is ridiculous. You even heard Gamzee crashing around his room this morning, and if Gamzee beat someone getting up then you know that that person is one lazy fucker who should get up.

You reach his room and begin banging furiously on the door to his respite block, hoping to rouse him. And, holy shit, it works! You hear him fumbling out of his recuperacoon and within a few moments he’s at the door with a blanket wrapped around his sopor slime covered body, wearing an annoyed face. 

“KK, what do you want?” Sollux says with his usual fast paced speech.

“For you to get dressed and out of your room, fuckass! It’s your turn to monitor the transportalizers.”

He squints his eyes and you and cocks his head. “No it’s not. It’s Gamzee’s turn.”

“Gamzee did it last week!” 

“Yeah. Every Wednesday is his turn. And, oh, look at that. It’s Wednesday.” He says and abruptly ends the conversation by closing the door in your face.

You throw your arms in the air with exasperation and, unfortunately, Sollux is right. It is Gamzee’s turn. You turn on your heel and head in the opposite direction, towards Gamzee’s respiteblock. 

Once you reach his door, you bang on his door a few times and wait. And wait. And wait. Jegus, what is taking this clown so long? You bang on his door a bit harder and a bit longer and wait some more but to no avail. Letting out a sigh, you punch in the override code on the keypad next to the door and the door swishes open. You could have just used the buzzer on the keypad but you prefer knocking. It shows them you mean business and it hurries their ass up. 

You step in to Gamzee’s respite block but you do not see Gamzee, and you suddenly remember why you never go in here. The room is a complete disaster with his horns strewn about everywhere, empty Faygo bottles cluttering the place, and sopor dripping out of his recuperacoon and on to the floor. 

You almost slip on a sticky mixture of soda and sopor on the floor that’s right in front on his husktop. Why is Gamzee’s husktop on the floor? You shrug it off and pick it up and toss it on his bed. He must be in his bathroom, you think.

Avoiding the horns and bottles, you maneuver your way to the bathroom and knock on the door several times. No one answers and you begin to worry about your friend. You try knocking again, but still, no one answers. You use a different override code on the bathroom door’s keypad and it opens for you to reveal a sight that makes your heart jump into your throat. 

You see Gamzee lying on his bathroom floor with his paint only half finished, dripping wet with water mixed with sweat, and a towel wrapped loosely around his waist as he shook where he lay, eyes wide open with fear as he muttered things you couldn’t make out to himself. Dropping to your knees, you try to snap him out of the trance he’s in. No dice. 

 

***

 

Everything hurts. Your head hurts, your eyes hurt, your body hurts. You don’t think you’ve ever been in this much pain before. 

The same scenario keeps repeating itself endlessly as you beg it to go away. You ask your mirthful messiahs to rescue you from this carnage you can not help but to see, but there is only silence. You feel yourself start to shake the more you see it and you think this is how you will die. You will go insane right here, on your bathroom floor. You will become paralyzed. You will vomit from watching your murdered friends and you will choke on it. Your friends will forget about you. They will forget to check in on the annoying clown who speaks of miracles and who loves a certain type of soda a bit too much. And they’ll all be better off.

And then you hear your name being called. It’s far away, and it is barely a whisper to you, but you can hear it nonetheless. You try to search for the voice, digging it out of the haze of blood that you see. You’re rushing toward it, grabbing for it, trying to hold on to the somehow familiar voice when you feel a touch. Its barely anything, but you concentrate on it. You feel a set of hands on your shoulders, pressing down, trying to get you to resurface from your illusions. You’re shaking so hard, you feel as though you might vibrate out of your skin and lose those hands that are keeping you somewhat sane. You scramble to hold on to the voice and the hands at the same time but they’re running through your fingers like sand and you’re losing grip on both of them. You try moving your hand up to touch the one that’s on your shoulder but you can’t. You are paralyzed, and this is how you will die. With an imaginary voice taunting you, and death’s hand guiding you to your messiahs.

“Gamzee Makara, snap out of it you shithead!” These eight words ring in your hearducts and bring on a wave of senses. You once again feel the cold tile floor, feel the sweat running down your body, feel your damp hair sticking to your face and the tears that you did not know were there that are flowing down it. You can hear your friend’s voice calling your name over and over again, and you feel his hands pressing down on you hard as he shakes you from side to side. The scene of gore fades away into white, and then suddenly you are staring at the very worried face of your friend, Karkat. 

“Hey. Best friend.” You drawl out and muster up a small grin for him. 

He cries out in relief and slides his hands off your shoulders and brings them to the side of your head and begins breathing heavily over you with eyes closed shut. You wait patiently for him to collect himself, staring up at him.

“If you didn’t feel like shit right now I would punch you so hard for making me worry so god damn much. Asshole.” He says through heavy breaths as he stands up. You chuckle at him and he helps you get back to your feet. Your legs wobble a bit beneath you, but you steady yourself by leaning on your friend.

“Come on you juggalo. Lets get you cleaned up.” He says to you and he wets a cloth with cold water and runs it over your face, taking the messy paint, sweat, and tears with it. You close your eyes and lean into the cool touch, as it washes away your worry with ease.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally meant for this to just be Gamzee suffering stuff, but it ended in un-planned Karkat/Gamzee shipping so I'm pretty happy about that! Possible follow up to this being Karkat/Gamzee smut? Maybe?


End file.
